


Surprise!

by Unrenowned_Writer



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Fluff, Gender-neutral Reader, Hurt/Comfort, One-Shot, Other, Pain, Reader-Insert, Surgery, Takes place in Borderlands 2, Vault Hunter!Reader, can be seen as romantic, pain and fluff, pretty platonic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-26
Updated: 2016-02-26
Packaged: 2018-05-23 07:45:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,057
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6109866
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unrenowned_Writer/pseuds/Unrenowned_Writer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lady luck was not on your side today. In fact, she spit in your face. But your back in Sanctuary, that's good right? Not really when you can barely make it out of the building before collapsing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Surprise!

Heavy footsteps shuffle over the ill maintained floors of Sanctuary's fast travel station. The light of the sun pouring in from the windows was blinding, rendering your vision useless at this point. With struggled breaths and painful shambling steps, you make it to the door frame of the building, only to have your legs take no more and give out. You lay on the cool concrete ground, wheezing for breath as sounds of panic and rapid stomping come closer.

Hands gingerly lift your frail form off the pavement. You wince in pain as injured muscles are forcibly moved, pulled, and pushed from being lifted. Wind blew over you, as your carrier rushed you away, stinging your open wounds and chilling the blood around them. Any words spoken to you were impossible to decipher, even the voices speaking them had become difficult to figure out. Your consciousness was slipping away, and quickly. By the time you were set back down, it was nearly gone. Then a the most intense sharp shooting pain radiated from your side through your whole body.

A shill scream was ripped from your lungs, straining your vocal cords like never before. Tears gathered in your eyes, swiftly streaming down your temples to your ears. The pain continued for what felt like days; stabs, cuts, digging, and stinging. This was torture. It hurt so much. And throughout the horrible ordeal, the same voice spoke to you. Muttering very similar phrases over and over to you. Slowly, through clouding pain, you reattained your ability to comprehend speech. You could partially understand what the voice was saying. It was an apology.

Shortly after figuring out some of the words, the pain plateaued. The cutting, stabbing, and digging all stopped. The stinging however, remained, now accompanied by a general soreness. Blinking away the last of your tears, you look around trying to recognize your surroundings. Unfortunately pain induced delirium still held a grip on your mind, making it difficult to recognize much of anything.

The voice from before spoke up again, only now it had become a tad simpler to understand what was being said. “You're one tough Vault Hunter,” You hear straining your brain to decode the voice's words, “Most people pass out from the pain five minutes into my surgeries. Especially the ones that happen when I run out of anesthetics. Which, needless to say, yours did.”

You slowly turn your head in the direction the voice came from and spy a figure. Your eyes readjusted allowing the figure to came more into focus. With your awareness coming back to you, you were able to identify this figure. Dr. Zed stood nearby you, with what looked like fresh blood splattered on his clothes and gloves.

“How bad was it?” you rasp out while simultaneously choking down your cries of pain.

“Well,” he muttered whilst rummaging through some kind of metal bowl, “I pulled out two bullets, one from your shoulder, the other from your leg. Looks like the third bullet busted your shield, or maybe it was the first bullet. Either way, it caused the fire nova to burn you instead of around you. And a few minor scratches along with one more serious one that needed stitches. All in all, seems like you've had a busy day.”

“You could say that,” you murmur. Squirming some you try to sit up on the operation table, an endeavor that proved to be a bad idea. When the muscles of your core contracted and weight began to shift to your forearms, a new wave of pain crashed over you. Hissing in anguish you shut your eyes tight to hold back the tears, and decide to abandon any further attempts to move.

A moment later, you felt the table lurch before promptly rolling. “You want to tell old Dr. Zed here what happened?” he asked wheeling you away. He stopped the table over by one of the cots and effortlessly lifted you from it. He lifted you like you were nothing. Sure you felt extremely weak and frail right now, but he still lifted a hundred plus pound human as if it were nothing. How the hell did he get this strong? Scratch that, you didn't want to know.

As he set you on the marginally more comfortable cot you glance away, debating whether or not to tell him of your failures. You know for a fact that your story will be the talk of the floating city for quite some time. That said, it still might just be for the best to bit the bullet and tell of the stupidly unlucky incidences that nearly cost you your life. Sanctuary's denizens will still most likely exaggerate the whole thing. With a heavy sigh turned into a hiss of pain, you told Zed of your misadventure that got you so beaten and bruised. 

You were out alone, in Three Horns Divide hunting bullymongs. You drove the runner right off a cliff smack dab in the middle of a bullymong. Most of your remaining ammo was unloaded into the beasts, but a few giant hunks of snow and ice, and scratches from the little ones wore down your shield. It allowed a couple of them to land a few good scratches. 

After they were all dealt with, you slowly trudged back to the fast travel station where low and behold, a group of bandits were restocking their ammo. And upon seeing you, quickly depleted their stock once more. Luck for you, their aim sucked for the most part. You killed half of them with a pistol, using what little ammo you had left for it. That got the others to retreat. With them fleeing, you ran, or rather hobbled as quickly as you could, to the fast travel station. Unfortunately, once you got to the station some of the retreating bandits got in a few good shots, destroying your shield in the process. Just before teleport, the fire nova exploded from the malfunctioning shield, burning you.

“Any particular reason you were out hunting those things by yourself?” Zed question after you shared your tale, “Why didn't you ask any of the other Vault Hunters for help?”

“It was for a job,” you reply shifting your gaze away from the so called doctor, “a personal one. I wanted to keep it quiet.”

Zed sighed, you could practically hear him shaking his head at you, “I hope the secrecy was worth it 'cause you'll need a-day-or-two's worth of rest, at least, before I'm letting you go off to get yourself nearly killed again.” You smile faintly at Zed's concern and close your eyes. For a moment, your mind focused on the pain that pulsed from every cut and bruise. You furrow your brows at the feeling. Desperate to keep your attention focused on something other than your pain you ask in a groan when visiting hours are. “Uh, well, there aren't any set hours for visiting,” Zed answered, “There someone you want to see?”

“Yeah... could you, maybe, ask Claptrap if he would come by?” you meekly request. Peeling an eye open, you spy a perplexed Dr. Zed. Despite being confused by your pick of the annoying little steward bot over anyone else in Sanctuary, Zed respects your wishes. While he ECHOed the bot you were left to once again focus on your pain. Maybe you should have Zed to first have someone fetch some painkillers.

A sharp pang in your side brought fresh tears to your eyes. Grinding your teeth as you fought them back you come to the conclusion that you defiantly should have asked for painkillers first. Slowly you reach up to cast away some of the tears. Before you can, your body jerks in shock at a loud cry, and causing you to hiss in pain once more.

“Minion!” that was the only word shouted before you heard a single wheel roll over to you. Looking down you spot the little loud mouthed bot that startled you. He could barely see over the cot. Waving his arms about he spoke up again, “What the heck happened to you!?” You gave him a weak smile in response. Though he couldn't show much concern, Claptrap's ton of voice was full of it. You told him what happened, that you were attacked bullymongs and bandits. It didn't seem to calm him down in the slightest.“What the hell were you thinking? Don't you know you can't be my minion if you're dead! Why would you do something like that by yourself!?”

“I was getting something,” you answer, “Go look in my backpack.” Hesitant to follow your command, the bot slowly wheeled over to where your backpack was left. With his back to you, he opened up the bag to search it's contents. Claptrap pulled out tuffs of bluish-white fur, and for once in his life, he was speechless.

Moments passed by in silence. When Claptrap did speak again, his voice sounded... emotionless. It unnerved you. It was easy to forget sometimes that Claptrap is indeed a robot. “Is this... a Mohawk made out of bullymong fur?”

“Yeah,” you softly confirm, not letting your slight unease be present in your voice, “I remember you said you like bullymong fur back when we were on Southern Shelf. It's a late birthday gift for ya.” Claptrap stayed quiet during and after your reply. Between the oddly quiet robot and the now absent Zed, you couldn't really hold much of a conversation with anyone right now. Felling especially meek right then you quietly add, “You didn't tell any of us until the day of, so I never got the chance to get you anything.”

More silence, and then you heard something from Claptrap... sobbing. You were filled with a sense of worry hearing the little bot sob. While struggling to sit up on the cot you spy Claptrap rolling back to your side. As he got closer you notice the dark liquid pooling in his eye stock and dripping down. He was actually telling the truth when he said he could cry.

You frown at the sight of the crying robot, doubts plaguing your thoughts. Did he not like it? Is he malfunctioning? He's acted a little off this whole time, is something wrong? You couldn't voice any of your concerned questions though, Claptrap started babbling out mostly incomprehensible nonsense. He sobbed, wiped away oily tears, and went off on irrelevant tangents; or so you assumed. Truth be told you couldn't comprehend even a tenth of all the things the little chatterbot went on about.

“H-hey! Calm down,” you finally manage to sputter, “Why are you crying?”

“Because-” Claptrap hiccuped, though how and why he would do so is beyond you, “This is the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me, ever! I can't believe you would go out and nearly get yourself killed just to ensure I got an awesome birthday gift! You're the best minion a robot master could ever ask for.”

You'd laugh if it didn't hurt so much. Claptrap was a very odd robot, but at least he was happy. “You know, I could have done that and gotten back without anyone ever knowing about it if I had more ammo and-or those bandits weren't there. It wasn't that difficult of a task, I just had some bad luck on my way back.”

“Oh...” He paused and cast away the last of his robot tears, “Well still, this is the best gift I've ever gotten. Actually it's the only gift I've ever gotten.” Claptrap's tone had gone back to his usual chipper one, and put a small smile on your face. While many others would say they felt otherwise or just be apathetic, you hated seeing Claptrap sad.

“I'm just glad you like it, Claptrap,” You quietly reply. With a small sigh you carefully lay back down on the cot, wincing in pain every few seconds there was movement. Once lying back down with somewhat tolerable pain, you close your heavy eyes for a moment. Then two moments. Then three. Then four. Then something lightly gripped your hand. You were too close to sleep to care about finding out for sure what it was, but the quiet; thank you, that you heard just before falling asleep gave you a pretty good idea.


End file.
